Should We Genetically Engineer Farm Animals to Feel Less Pain?

The New York Times had a very interesting Op-Ed Friday, which took an unusual approach to the concern that factory farms are inhumane. Adam Shriver, a doctoral student in the philosophy-neuroscience-psychology program at Washington University, makes the argument that the key to raising more humane meat isn't changing the methods by which they are raised, but to genetically engineer them so they feel less pain from their conditions.

James: Are you kidding me? This sounds like some bizarre Nazi eugenics experiment. Why don't we just genetically engineer these animals to have no legs, no eyes and no brains so that they're just a pile of meat? I think, (as a reader on Huffington Post said) it's the humans who should be genetically engineered to learn how to care for other living beings other than themselves. Better yet, maybe we should genetically engineer the homeless so that we can eat them!! Isn't it funny that we'll eat fist fulls of meat and think nothing of it but find cannibalism to be revolting? Maybe people would care more about the treatment of these animals if their meat came to them like it did when people lived on the farm--bloody, hairy and with the hooves still on it.

As it is people don't even have to think about where that meat comes from and what it looked like when that animal was slaughtered, drained of blood and skinned. People just go buy the plastic covered sanitized version, which helps them not think about where it came from. In addition, maybe people would think twice about eating if they had to kill, skin and gut their own meat. But there are other reasons to be against eating meat, "Meat production is also responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all modes of transportation." For these and other reasons I went vegetarian four years ago.

PHOTO: Animal rights activist Harmony Qura lays spattered with fake blood in a giant meat tray during a protest on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 2, 2007. Oct. 4-10 is World Farm Animals week and activists around the world are demonstrating to put an end to animal suffering at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Reuters photo: Jason Reed